In the early days of human existence, food was a daily challenge. When one meal ended, the search for the next was immediately underway. The most reliable form of food preservation, in those days, was eating as much as you could when food was available, in hopes of storing up a bit of fat for the lean times. (Sadly, our instincts remain the same even when the fat storage has become less of a benefit and more of a health hazard.) Food, especially animal products like milk or meat, could be kept for only the shortest period of time before spoiling. Under those circumstances, the constant daily struggle for nourishment kept people occupied pretty much 100% of the time. The few windows--for example, the few hours after gorging on a fresh kill--might be devoted to little luxuries like storytelling or dancing, but then again, they might be devoted to sharpening the spears for the next go-round.

The key to more leisure time--and all the things that leisure time allows, such as invention, culture, art, literature, settlement--rested in two vital developments. First, domestication of animals and cultivation of crops gave humans a more steady, reliable food source. But even that steady food source was subject to the need for long-term storage. If you harvest your grain once a year, you need a way to keep it edible during the rest of the year, or you’re pretty much right back where you started.

You may have wondered...what's the best way to host a wine tasting? What are the many steps that guarantee a pleasant and educational experience for all involved? Indeed, how can I become the perfect wine host or hostess?

There are tips we can give you that would help. But what fun would that be? Instead, we're giving you pointers on how NOT to host a wine-tasting. Follow these guidelines, and you can rest assured that your events will never be sullied by any annoying "guests." You'd really rather taste your wine sitting all alone in room with aluminum foil on the windows, wouldn't you?

How are wine and hurricanes related? Well, for openers, hurricanes are A LOT stronger. You can easily drink two glasses of wine, but drink two hurricanes, and you're in danger of passing out. Oh, you meant the storm, not the Pat O'Brien's drink?

Adding water to your wine is almost as old as wine itself. The Romans and Greeks would have never considered drinking wine without adding water first; in fact, they considered it guache behavior on a par today with chugging Night Train out of a paper bag. Even in mediterranean countries today, wine mixed with water is considered a proper beverage for the family's children, with less water being added as the child grows older. Few of us in the U.S. want water in our wine, though. What we don't know is that much of the time, we're getting it anyway. And yet we should probably be thankful that we're getting our wine watered down for us.

Taste. It seems like such a simple thing. But as we discussed last time, though it is perhaps the simplest sense, it's not simple. What we generally refer to as "taste" is a combination of several intertwined and intermingling factors. Sometimes the combination is really quite simple—just add smoke flavoring and salt in the right proportions to texturized vegetable protein, and voila! --fake bacon bits for your salad. Other flavors, luckily (or unluckily, if you love food a little TOO much), can be a complex and wonderful combination so multifaceted, the conscious mind gives up on distinguishing them and just squeals with delight. Such is the case with wine.

Taste is an interesting sense. In many ways, it's the weakest sense. You can see an almost infinite variety of items, differing in shape, color, degrees of brightness, etc. You can hear a wide range of tones, qualities, and volumes. You can distinguish thousands of smells, and touch includes dimensions such as pressure, pain, and temperature that can combine into sensations as varied as burning your hand on the stove, getting goosebumps, enoying a hot-oil massage, or being scratched by an itchy sweater. And all of these four senses are keeping you actively engaged with the outside world pretty much any time you're awake (and some when you're asleep).

If you enjoy every sensory aspect of a wine, it's that much more enjoyable. So strive to appreciate wine with all your senses…sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound. Sound is the only one that rarely makes it into a tasting note, because wines generally sound the same as each other. But you should still make sure to appreciate that gleeful gurgle in a pour, that almost inaudible drip of the last drop going into a glass, that faint swish as you twirl a red in need of breath around in your decanter to aerate it better, and for sparkling wines, that delicate hiss of the bubbles streaming to the surface. It will enhance your experience, and prime your ears for the witty conversation or lovely music that will hopefully follow the sounds of wine.

Now that you've allowed your eyes to drink in the beauty of the color and general appearance of your glass of wine, it's time to smell it. The how-to part is easy. Take your glass, and gently swirl the wine around inside of it. Try not to slosh it over the edge; this gets easier with practice. (It also teaches you not to fill your wine glass so full, Mr. Oinky.) Stick your nose into the opening of the glass--you can go pretty far and still be appropriate, but remember, the object is to SMELL the wine, not to stuff your entire body into the glass starting with your nose. If it begins to look or feel like the latter, back off a tad. On the other hand, don't sniff daintily several inches above the mouth of the glass. You'll miss most of the hot nasal action.

One of the first things to consider when tasting a wine is its appearance. It's rare nowadays to find a wine whose looks tell you much. At one time, a dull, cloudy wine might reveal a badly-made wine; now most winemakers use modern techniques that prevent visible problems. But it could happen, so we keep considering it as a factor. Besides, it's fun. Wine is pretty, so it's pleasant to look at, especially if the color is one of your favorites. And you can get clues about the grapes and the wine from the color, although those clues tend to be read mainly by people with more wine experience than your humble narrator.

If you're like me, there's one thing stopping you from writing up your own tasting notes: the wine score. The rest is pretty straightforward. You can get most of the detailed information you need from the wine label, like the winery, the name of the wine, the vintage year, the wine's location of origin, price, etc. You can get the grape varietals (types of grapes used) from the label, or look it up online. The description of the wine, you can wing--just say what you think of the wine, and you're there. But what do you put down for the wine score? How do you even begin?